Page 31 of Highland Fire

Her curtain of dark hair fell riotously to her knees.

Her skin was as white and unblemished as the snow-flakes dashing in a wild dervish against the window panes.

Through the torn edges of her shirt, the ripe globes of her breasts rose high and free, their dark crests begging for the touch of a man’s lips.

Her innocent eyes were shimmering like a Highland mist, gray, mysterious, and infinitely dangerous.

Oh no, she wasn’t beautiful, thought Rand with uncharacteristic savagery, despising his need, the ache in his loins, her damnable allure.

She might have been a priestess to the ancient cult of Bacchus.

She was sensuality personified, and she was any man’s for the taking.

She must be. No decent woman would dress herself in boy’s clothes and cavort about the countryside in the dead of night with only males for companions.

He was seeing things clearly for the first time—the freedoms she enjoyed, the isolated cottage, the lack of a chaperone, the dowd’s disguise.

Was it only at the witching hour that she turned into a wanton?

He remembered something else—the girl his cousin, David, had spirited away on Rand’s last night of furlough before he had rejoined his regiment.

He should have known it was she. Even then, she had cast her spell on him.

A red haze swam before his eyes. Bitterness welled up inside him. This was the woman he had hoped to make his wife? She had made a royal fool of him. Hell, he had made a royal fool of himself.

He threw his neckcloth to the floor and slipped out of his dark coat, letting it fall in a heap. Without haste, he started on the buttons of his shirt.

“It was you,” he said. “You were the girl David rescued on my last night in Deeside?”

His words drove away the absurd suspicion that had begun to take root in her mind. He didn’t sound like a man on the point of ravishing a virgin. His voice was coldly polite, his expression haughty. He looked remarkably in control of himself.

Taking comfort from that thought, she concentrated on exonerating herself for a course of conduct which, by anyone’s lights, must appear inexcusable. She nodded.

“Were you and David lovers? Had you arranged to meet when I was…otherwise occupied?”

“Don’t be absurd,” she gasped, outrage momentarily putting her fear to flight. “I was delivering whiskey to your empty boathouse.”

One eyebrow quirked. “And you say that I am absurd?” He shook his head. “Are you saying you were involved in smuggling even then?” When she nodded, his eyes narrowed on her. “Yet, as far as I recall, you were not passing yourself off as a boy.”

“You may believe that after so close an escape I learned my lesson. From that night on, when I was out smuggling, I adopted the role of a boy.”

“What were you doing in the boathouse tonight?”

“We were trying to right…” Her voice was shaking so badly, she could hardly get the words out. Gathering the shreds of her control, she started over. “When you first came into Deeside, we set snares for you. You must know it by now.”

“I do. Whiskey that was laced with turpentine; bells that summoned servants to the wrong chambers; candles made of soap; locked doors with no keys to them, and so on. Oh yes, I was well aware that a horde of mischievous children had been let loose in my house. Are you saying there was more?”

She nodded eagerly. “Yes. That’s just it, you see. We assumed that you would go out in your boat. It’s what you always do within a day or two of your arrival.”

“And?”

Unable to hold that piercing stare, she raised her eyes to a point over his shoulder. “And so we…that is, I poked holes in the bottom of your boat but plastered them over so that you wouldn’t know it until it was too late.”

“I see. You meant me to drown. I wouldn’t have, you know. I am an excellent swimmer.”

“That’s not it! How can you think such a thing?

I only meant you to look ridiculous when your boat sank.

It was more of a joke. There was no danger.

The river was at its lowest ebb. But you didn’t take your boat out.

I had to do something, don’t you see? In spring, when the snows start to melt in the hills and mountains, the river will be in full spate. ”

“Are you saying that tonight you and Daroch went to the boathouse to fix my boat?” He sounded faintly bored.

“In a manner of speaking,” she said miserably.

“Go on. I’m listening.”

“Daroch demolished it so that anyone would see at a glance that it could not float in the water. I’ll pay for the damage,” she added eagerly, hoping the offer would soften him.

“Oh, you’ll pay, one way or another.” He gave her a hard smile. “And that little episode at the quarry? How do you explain that?”

She coughed, then visibly swallowed. “There was a slope of loose scree where I jumped. I knew you were hard on my heels. You would have taken a tumble, but nothing very serious would have happened to you.”

“And The Fair Maid? When you threw your dagger at me?”

“I was aiming for the bedpost, I swear it.” Oh God, with every word, she could feel herself sinking deeper into a quagmire of her own making.

“And later, when I almost drowned trying to save you?”

She looked at him for a long moment with huge imploring eyes before she whispered brokenly, “Would you believe I was on the point of giving myself up when your friends dragged you from the water?”

“I would not. In fact, I think you were waiting to see the results of your handiwork.”

“What does that mean?”

“You would not have lifted a finger to save me.”

Her head jerked as though he had slapped her. Her nostrils were quivering. “What possible reason could I have for wishing you dead?”

“The feud. Revenge for everything your grandfather lost. Envy. Pride. Because I’m English.

How the hell should I know?” He didn’t really believe what he was saying.

The thought that he might be softening enraged him, and he lashed out at the bedpost in a fury of passion.

She could spin her tissue of lies so skillfully that a man was tangled up in her gossamer threads before he could perceive he was well and truly caught.

Though she was far from panicking, she had a very healthy respect for the angry man who loomed over her.

Her words tripped over each other in her haste to get them out.

“You must believe me! The feud…none of that means anything to me, to any of us. It was your unfeeling treatment of your tenants! I don’t know what we hoped to gain.

We were warning you off, I suppose. But that is a far cry from wishing for your death.

And later, when you restrained your factor’s worst excesses and allowed your tenants to drift back to their crofts, we gave up any idea of punishing you. Oh God, why won’t you believe me?”

He did believe her, but it hardly seemed to matter to him.

Misunderstanding his silence, she cried out, “Why should Daroch and I go to the boathouse tonight if not for the reason I’ve already given you? We did it for you! Can’t you see that?”

At last they had come to the crux of the matter.

Rand’s eyes were very blue, very bright as they locked on hers.

Behind that daunting stare he was reflecting that he had engineered things so that she was forced to accept Mrs. MacGregor as her chaperone.

That must have been a difficult obstacle to circumvent.

Where else could she tryst with her lover now that her cottage was out of bounds?

His boathouse was deserted and conveniently located between Daroch’s and Glenshiel’s estates.

Daroch was her lover. Hadn’t he always suspected that there was something between them?

This, more than anything, was what had unleashed the storm that raged inside him.

Jealousy, pure and unadulterated. While she dangled him on a string, the young pup in the next chamber, whom he had doctored so solicitously only an hour before, had been keeping her bed warm.

He, Rand, had misjudged her and she had connived at keep him in error.

That look of wide-eyed innocence, the trembling whenever he touched her, the half-hearted refusals, those untutored embraces—all of it was a sham.

He had thought to control her, and all the time, she had been controlling him .

His eyes flared in sudden comprehension.

“Did you think I would offer you marriage?” he asked incredulously.

“Was that your game? Is that why you led me on?” Something dark and ugly moved deep inside him, some hidden facet of his character, which he would examine later, goaded him to add, “Can you see yourself fitting into my world? Good God, girl, don’t you think I know what I owe my name and family? ”

“Marriage to you never once entered my head,” she snapped.

His words had touched more than her vanity, more than her pride.

He had struck at the deepest well of her femininity.

Though he had said nothing that she had not said to herself a hundred times over, on his lips, the words had all the force of poisoned darts.

She felt naked, defenseless, as transparent as crystal, with nowhere to hide herself.

Like a wounded animal seeking escape from a trap, she lashed out at him.

“Don’t you think I know what I owe myself?

Your world holds no attraction for me. If I did think of marriage to you, it was only to pity the poor woman who would be your wife.

I remember the orgies of former years. And I was there when you were bedding Nellie, as you must know. ”

The vivid recollection of that scene stirred a cauldron of emotions she ruthlessly pushed away.

Tossing her mane of hair over her shoulders, unconscious of the tantalizing glimpse of exposed breast that peeked through the edges of her torn shirt, she went on scathingly, “I never led you on. If anything led you on, it was your own colossal conceit.”